Cookies on the Arsenal WebsiteWe use cookies to improve your browsing experience and help us improve our websites. For more information, please click here. By continuing to use our website, you agree to our use of such cookies.

'So nearly Wenger's finest hour'

By Mark Brus

In terms of giving the fans some pride, it was mission accomplished for Arsenal in Munich on Wednesday night. But it was so close to being what would arguably have been Arsène Wenger’s finest hour, certainly on the European stage.

Yes he’s brought us historic wins in the San Siro (twice), the Bernabeu, and that wonderful first leg win over Barcelona, but I truly think that a 3-0 win at Allianz Arena to take us through to the quarter-finals would have trumped the lot.

You’ll probably be aware of the stats already, but this is the first home defeat of the season for Bayern, and the first time in 44 games that they haven’t managed to score. They’re widely regarded as the best team in Europe at the moment and it wouldn’t be surprising if they went all the way and won the Champions League now.

Arsenal, in turn, are certainly going through a rough patch at the moment. As bad as we were in the first leg, to show up in Germany and play like we could win is remarkable; to silence the home crowd and rattle the continent’s in-form team in such a way is not to be sniffed at by any means.

We showed that we DO belong on this stage, and now we have to show that by beating the Premier League teams we so often fail to show up against. Wenger has to find a way to motivate his players like he did on Wednesday night on a more regular basis, because so often that seems to be the thing that’s holding us back. We can beat big teams, we can come back from seemingly insurmountable situations and scorelines – we just need to harness that concentration and mental strength so that it lasts whole games, rather than just second halves.

Hopefully this result will bring the confidence needed to finish in the top four. Hopefully the slight tweak in defence will see us perform like more of a unit from here on in; Fabianski had a very good game, having appeared in the team after not being seen for what feels like forever, and if he can keep up this form it would be very useful indeed to have an alternative to Szczesny.

And what of Vermaelen? A real fans’ favourite for his fighting qualities since joining the club in 2009, he has struggled under the weight of the captaincy this season. He too was dropped, and the partnership of Mertesacker and Koscielny looked much better.

To dwell more on the future, Carl Jenkinson was excellent and showed us we won’t miss Bacary Sagna too much. Yes, we’ve been here before and maybe got ahead of ourselves, but he’s shown enough at this young age to persuade me he’ll come good, even if ideally we’d have the more experienced Frenchman ahead of him most of the time. Still, if Sagna doesn’t want to stay, recent history shows there’s little we can do to keep him; at least Jenkinson’s form means it won’t be a disaster - and I rather rate young Nico Yennaris whom we also have in reserve.

LadyArse

LadyArse is a collection of writers, delivering daily news, gossip and opinion about the club they love

One final thought on no English teams in the quarter-finals - is this a crisis? Hardly. The media love to play up situations like this and look for a broader significance in it all, but there isn’t one, these things sometimes happen. Man City and Chelsea had very difficult groups, and Arsenal and Man Utd got very hard draws in the next round.

There are a lot of strong teams emerging all around Europe, particularly in Germany, who have produced an insane number of talented young players in recent years. And of course PSG and a number of Russian teams have enormous financial backing now, which means they have caught up. As horrible as it is to be reminded of it, Chelsea did win the thing last year, so talk of an English crisis after one season is very premature.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The Arsenal Football Club PLC or its associated companies (“Arsenal”). Arsenal is not responsible for, and accepts no liability in respect of, the content of external websites

Copyright 2013 LadyArse.com. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.ladyarse.com as the source. This notice supersedes the message below that implies copyright belongs to Arsenal.com. That message appears in error

Copyright 2015 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source15 Mar 2013

Please ensure that you enter your parents email address and click here to review our privacy policy for those who are under 13. Please note that an email address can only be used once to register as a Digital Member so you cannot register for both an adult and junior membership under the same email address.

Mobile Number

* Country

Language Preference

* Postcode

* Email Address

* Confirm Email Address

* Password

* Confirm Password

Get all the news from Arsenal.com

Manager's Email and Weekly E-Newsletter (only in English)I would like to receive the weekly Manager's and Arsenal's e-newsletters and other information about offerings from The Arsenal Football Club Plc by post, email and SMS.

Club Offers and Information (only in English)I would like to receive ticket updates, membership notifications and details of other offers and information relating to The Arsenal Football Club Plc and its group companies from time to time ("Arsenal") by post, email and SMS.

Offers and Information About Our Partners and Sponsors (only in English)I would like to receive offers and information about carefully selected third parties, including partners and sponsors, from Arsenal by post, email and SMS.